Sanity Doesn't Exist
by bloodhungryHalfa
Summary: Just you're average horrible day of Hi Skool, or so Dib thinks. Then, of course, two new students show up. Not another Irken, please not another Irken... (Cover Image by DeePr)


**– Sanity Doesn't Exist –**

Hi Skool. If someone asked Dib where they would go to find hell on earth, he wouldn't have hesitated to name this place instantly.

It had been five long, insane years since an alien had turned up for Skool one day with the intent of invading Dib's home planet, Earth. And it had been three incredibly boring years since Zim slowed down his invasion attempts, courtesy of the Almighty Tallests telling him his mission, was a sham and that he was now banished for good.

The crazy little irken just used his machines to blow up the occasional city block or random people who just so happened to get on his nerves. Sometimes there was revenge, too.

It had become an unofficial rivalry, a... _game_, of sorts.

However, even _that_ had managed to slow to a near standstill ever since Hi Skool – being the life-sucking leech it is – began draining up all of Dib's time, leaving him too busy to be able to 'waste' it trying to figure out Zim's next plot and maybe, if he was so inclined, try and stop it.

Still, it was incredibly boring trying to live without that constant challenge, the ingrained instincts keeping you on your toes and ready for whatever either of them could and _would_ throw at each other.

A big, muscled hand grabbed his shoulder.

"On the other hand, being ready for anything doesn't just help with aliens," he mused, staring at the inside of his locker. Again. He paused, sighing in exasperation, "...I've _really_ gotta stop talking to myself."

Thankfully, Ms Bitters was no longer his teacher anymore due to the simple fact she still taught at Skool. Why anyone in their right mind would allow her near _kids_ was still beyond him.

Instead, he had a sack of bones hag of a woman who looked like she died about three thousand years ago and somebody forgot to tell her. Miss Gool shuddered every time she breathed in, and her voice was always a strangled rasp. "Nooow, kiids," rattle, rasp, "weee haaave twoooo," rattle, rasp, "neeew stuuudents..."

Not another Irken, _please_ not another Irken.

The door creaked open dramatically and there was utter silence as for a long, stringy, stretching moment absolutely nothing happened.

There was the brief noise of a scuffle, a voice hissing, "_I'm not going in first_ – Hey!" The last word turned into a yelp as a wiry brunette was shoved into the room unceremoniously, leaving her completely off-balance and wide-eyed. As she righted herself, visibly seething, the second girl slipped in and slid her cool, calculating gaze over the entirety of the room's occupants.

With a catlike smile playing on her lips, as if pondering how good each person in the room would taste with barbeque sauce and fries, she pointed a finger at the class and dragged it through the air so she'd pointed at everyone at least once.

"I am BRY! Call me anything else and you're toast," she fisted her hand and glared at everyone with equal venom. "AND. I. HATE. TOAST." Her icy blue-green eyes glinted dangerously and a few people nodded dumbly under the effects of her glacial gaze.

Naturally, the girl who Bry pushed into the room had a deadpan unimpressed look flickering across her slightly peach-tinted, pale mint-green face and promptly hit Bry across the back of her head.

"Ow," hissed Bry, pouting, giving her assailant the puppy-dog eyes.

A single fact clicked in Dib's head above all else. "Why is your skin green," he blurted, not quite forming it as a question.

Without missing a beat she simply said, "Because _Genius_ here dumped me into a vat of boiling hot green dye. The burns kept me in hospital for two years."

"And I got suspended for two years," said Bry cheerfully, perking up as if she had never been injured at all.

"The green dye sunk into my deep tissue," she said calmly, ignoring Bry as if she hadn't spoken, "so any new skin I grow goes a bit green as well. There are some other funky side-effects, but nothing gross." She shrugged a shoulder nonchalantly and smiled slightly, though it didn't reach her eyes.

He paused, not entirely sure what to say to that. She _looked_ pretty much human, except for the flat, almost Asian nose, flat, almost non-existent ears, large expressive eyes bigger than any human's and irises that were a pale gold with barely discernible pupils... not to mention the whole _green_ thing.

"Oh," he said finally, deciding to just keep his mouth shut on this one until he could be absolutely _sure_ she – _they_ – were telling the truth or not. He didn't want to tip them off if they really were alien(s), it would just made it harder for him to prove it in the end.

Zim probably would have mocked him for his silence but, lucky for Dib, the irken was ditching again.

"The name's Dee-Dee Phearce," she said, half-smirking and half-grinning.

"And don't you stupid humans forget it," exclaimed Bry, throwing both her fisted hands into the air above her.

Dee just slapped her in the back of the head again.

**– Interlude –**

**So... I sit down to write a Rise of the Guardians + Danny Phantom fan-fic, or maybe some Avengers or Merlin or Dragon Age or _Minecraft_ or _something_... and end up writing an Invader Zim fic I've had the idea for since I was... eleven or twelve or something.**

**The F***?**

**– Back to the Story –**

Convincing the humans he was one of their filthy earth-kin was becoming increasingly difficult.

The Mighty ZIM's naturally shorter stature left him still barely scraping past three feet tall, and while that was definitely three solid earth inches of improvement brought by his many-years-late irken equivalent of an early human 'growth spurt', it still left much to be desired.

Besides, he would never be tallest if he didn't get – oh wait, nevermind. The Tallests hated him. He'd been banished to this backwater planet for several of its solar orbits now.

Not that it had ever stopped him before.

He grinned like only Zim can grin, leaning back in his chair with one foot on the work table to steady him. What could he say? The behaviour of human teenagers had rubbed off on him...

Absent-mindedly, he tossed a piece of broken machinery he was working on over his shoulder, satisfied by the heavy clang it made as it broke on some piping. "EH, it was no good to begin with," he shrugged.

He briefly wondered whether he should go to that puny human hi skool that day, but shrugged it off. Nah, it wasn't really that interesting or terribly important to his disguise anymore. Lots of human teenagers seemed to... what was the word? "Ditch".

Even so, he would have to bide his time with enough attendance to keep him off the radar. He didn't want to get too much attention from this planet's pitiful government.

He probably should go...

The computer blared out in alarm. Yelping, Zim lost his balance anf his chair clattered to the floor.

"Agh! INFERNAL MACHINE," he yelled indignantly, using the spidery legs he could form from his PAK to bring himself to the console. "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS! HNN! COMPUTER?"

"Kalekzian energy signature detected," exclaimed the computer in a panic.

Zim briefly reminded himself he needed to do something about that stupid personality function. Then, "KALEKZIAN? Alert the tall – wait." The tallest hated him. The Kalekzian hated Irkens. That meant they hated the Tallests who hated Zim! But did that mean they hated Zim who was also an Irken? Hmm... "Track it... upload the data to my PAK. PREPARE MY SHIP IMMEDIATELY! GIR!"

"YES, MY MASTER," saluted GIR seriously, snapping to attention.

"Guard the house – nothing shall enter except for ZIM!"

"Okay," exclaimed GIR happily, his colouration and personality returning to its usual goofy blue. Minimoose squeaked, floating up from who-knows-where, looking somewhat dejected.

"Minimoose can help," Zim tacked on before he entered the elevator that would take him to his ship.

Zim shook his head, he'd long since abandoned the hope that GIR could be fixed. And Minimoose... well, who knew what the heck that thing was supposed to be.

**– Sanity Doesn't Exist –**

Smoke billowed from the felled escape shuttle, its exit hatch falling off with a pitiful crack. The device itself only being designed for one non-humanoid alien, the two humanoids who had been crammed inside were naturally extremely glad to be free.

"Whoo!" exclaimed the shorter, sweeping her dirty blood-crusted dye-job-gone-bad coloured hair out of her eyes. The teen grinned wildly, stretching her legs and jumping up onto the smoking mound that had formed upon touch-down. "That went better than expected!"

The other inhabitant lifted her soot-stained head, blearily looking at her companion with an odd mix of disbelief, horror and resignation. She grumbled something that sounded oddly like, 'Humans,' then promptly buried her head between her knees.

"Oh, come on, my flying wasn't _that_ bad," the human teen pouted, crossing her arms and jutting out her lower lip.

"I can fly remote-controlled _helicopters_ better than you flew this ching-wah TSAO duh liou mahng," barked the taller one, still sitting rather awkwardly in the pod and still clinging on for dear life.

Shorty blinked owlishly, "You _can't_ fly remote-controlled helicopters."

The taller buried her face again. "I must not kill Bry, I must not kill Bry," she proceeded to mutter under her breath. Bry simply grinned in victory.

**– Sanity Doesn't Exist –**

"If you try and stick me in that monstrosity, I will kill you. No joke."

Bry seriously didn't doubt her dubious frenemy's words, but that didn't stop her from trying. "Oh, come on, Dee-_chan_," she coaxed in a voice dripping with honeyed patronization, holding out the pink, frilly 'monstrosity'... a rather fetching pink dress, as it were.

The moment Dee sent her a look that would have made any sane person scream in terror and run for the hills, however, she decided to cut her losses and put the thing back on the rack. "Ok, ok, I jest," Bry amended.

Dee simply rolled her eyes, fidgeting from anxiety or paranoia... possibly both. "Look, let's just get what we need and leave, Bry... I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not an entirely convincing human anymore." She sighed. "Not that I ever was," she muttered bitterly.

Bry shrugged a shoulder, "Re_lax_... we've got it covered. Just keep your eyes on the eyes."

Dee dipped her chin, fiddling with her peach-tinted pale green fingers for a moment before browsing the clothes half-heartedly. Then she caught sight of some truly awesome duds and inwardly sighed, picking her size and doing a quick dimensions calculation in the back of her mind.

By the time she'd scoped out what she wanted, Bry had finished grabbing her own gear and was already paying for her items, looking as gorgeous as ever while somehow managing to give off an easy 'I'll kick your arse to next Tuesday' aura.

Dee soon joined her at the checkout, decked out in her new purchase as well. They divided the contents of their old bag into two new back-pack purchases and Dee stocked up on chocolate while Bry picked out a new pack of permanent hair dye. After a brief side-track with a cute litter of puppies in a pet store window, the two girls had bought doughnuts and then legged it. Inconspicuously.

"Ok, so maybe shopping isn't so bad," Dee admitted. "Think that guy will notice he's missing over two k?"

Bry twirled the stolen credit card in her fingers with a smirk, tossing it to some homeless guy. "Nah," she drew out, patting the pocket she'd stashed a small amount of the cash she'd gotten out with all the purchases they'd made.

Dee hummed a soft, single note. "_So_... now what?"

"Now we find a place, and then..."

Her calm demeanour changed as easily as the flick of a switch. "NO. No school. Please don't say school. I _hate_ school," she whined.

Bry just grinned a sinister grin.

**– End Chapter –**

Bet we all know how _that _argument ended, tehe... **!Ú!**

If I get some reviews I will seriously consider posting another chapter for your puny human minds to attempt to comprehend.

Uhhh... yeah. Something like that. Have a donut.

***gives reader a donut***

Achieved **bribery** LEVEL 2!

_C'ya amigos!_


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